What makes Facebook advertising so powerful is the data within Facebook’s advertising platform. The amount of data that Facebook has is mind boggling and possibly a little creepy, but as a marketer it offers a world of potential.

This allows businesses to serve advertisements directly to their ideal customer.

However, there is a tool inside Facebook’s ad manager that makes the platform even more powerful.

What is it?

… Facebook’s Custom Audience tool might be the most powerful marketing tool on the internet.

On Facebook, you have the ability to target people who have interacted with your company in many different ways, and it is all done through creating Custom Audiences inside Facebook Ads manager.

In this post we are going to outline the four most powerful Facebook Custom Audiences that you can create for your business.

Customers or Leads

Do you have a list of previous or current customers?

Do you have a list of leads that you are trying to get in contact with to do business?

If so, then you are in luck. Facebook allows you to upload your customer or lead data directly into their advertising platform.

Facebook uses information such as email addresses, phone numbers, zip codes and other data points from your list to match it with a Facebook user in their system.

For example, if there is a janedoe@gmail.com on your customer or lead list, Facebook will try to find that same email address in their system and match it Jane Doe’s user profile.

After the list has been created, you can serve advertisements directly to your leads or past customers.

This is a great way to get in front of an audience that already knows your brand and entice them to make a repeat purchase or get back in touch.

As long as you have a customer or lead list larger than 100 people, you can upload it to Facebook today and start serving advertisements.

Website Visitors

Are people visiting your website, but not purchasing your product or getting in contact with your business?

If so, Website Custom Audiences can help.

As long as you have a Facebook Pixel on your website, then you can start creating a list of people who visit your site, but do not take certain actions.

For example, if someone visits the checkout page, but does complete their purchase, your company can serve them an advertisement reminding them to complete their purchase.

You can also create a custom audience for people who spend a certain amount of time on your website.

For example, if people are spending more than two minutes looking at one of your products or services, then they are probably very interested in what your company has to offer.

You can create a custom audience that targets people who spend a certain amount of time on one of your web pages.

This is a great way to re-engage with people who may not have taken action after viewing it for so long.

Remember, 98% of the people who visit your website will not take the desired action that you want them to on their first visit. Using Website Custom Audiences is a great way to get them to return.

Engagement On Facebook

One of the newer Facebook features is the ability to target people that have engagement with your brand on Facebook- specifically video content and page interactions.

If your company produces video content and uploads it directly to Facebook, then this a feature you must use to your advantage.

Facebook allows you to create a custom audience based on how long a person watched one of your videos.

You can create a list based upon if an individual watched 25, 50, 75 or 95 percent of your video.

This is extremely powerful when used in combination with a broader advertising strategy.

For example, you can advertise your company’s video to your ideal audience. You can then create an advertisement that targets people who have watched at least 50 percent of your video.

Since everyone on this list has taken time out of their day to watch your content and are now familiar with your brand, you can then send them a more compelling advertisement to get them to take a desired action like purchasing a product, or requesting a proposal.

When used as part of a broader strategy, this can easily be one of Facebook’s best features.

If a person comment, liked, or shared one of your Facebook posts you can now target those users as well. Facebook will let you target people who have interacted with your page. This is a great new feature that we’ve been testing with all of our advertising accounts.

Lookalike Audiences

Without question this is the best marketing tool on the internet, and it is the key to growing your business.

Facebook allows advertisers to create lookalike audiences based upon custom audiences that you have created inside the ads manager.

For example, you can create a custom audience based upon people who have purchased your products within the last 90 days.

Facebook will then examine the data that they have on the people who have purchased your products in the last 90 days. Facebook will then find people in their database that have data similar to your past customers.

Facebook then creates a list with at least a million people who are similar to your past customers.

Hence, the term lookalike.

We’ve done a lot of testing at Root and have come to the conclusion that lookalike audiences are a great way to scale your campaign and bring in new sales or leads.

What Are You Waiting For?

Interested in getting started with Facebook Advertising?

Wondering how Root can help?

We’ll give you a free 30-minute consultation to either examine if your business is a good fit for Facebook advertising, answer any questions that you may have about Facebook and give you some tips if you are currently running your own campaigns.